Forum:Sparkhood and evil
It seems to be the conventional wisdom in this world that sparks are always evil. Certainly Othar thinks so, and certainly the pre-Boys Heterodynes are unambiguously shown as evil. But almost all of the young generation -- Agatha, Gil, Tarvek (I know he's controversial, but I believe in him), all of the gang at school in Castle Wulfenbach, all the gang in the circus -- are good. Not Tweedle, I suppose. And also, not the original Storm King and his crowd, back in the day. So, why the conventional wisdom? Why don't people think, "Sparks can be good or evil, like the rest of us, but the evil ones really do a lot of damage"? I guess one possibility is that sparks are decent in their youth but, over time, maybe because of a tendency to paranoia, become evil. So maybe 20 years from now Agatha will be evil, too. But I'd like to think that the character and personality of sparks is being influenced somehow. Either that they were evil by nature, but someone (Klaus? The Dreen?) is changing their genome to be good, or that they're, if not good by nature then at least spread out over a range of characters, like the rest of us, but someone (maybe the Other is older than we think?) has been pushing them toward evil, and after the Other was driven out for a while the sparks are returning to normal. : I'd blame two things: :* Evil Sparks will probably be remembered. Positive reputations are hard to build and easy to destroy. :* Sparks breaking through can cause damage even if they don't have evil intent, but the easy thing to do is lump that with evil. :Argadi (talk) 18:54, October 25, 2017 (UTC) :Wondered about this a lot myself! There's so much to chew over on this that either I'm reading too much into it or it's a theme the authors are playing on themselves. Somebody on Talk:Europa has just raised the related question: "How do the sparks in the rest of the world stay out of trouble?" Which is rather a point, isn't it? :It could be that there is indeed some mad science reason for it, as you say, but I wonder whether it could just be cultural - a self-fulfilling prophecy. There's a comment in the Glossary: : ''To Break Through--to reach the point where it is obvious from one's work or behavior that one has the Spark. Some say that the Spark does not exist in potential, and that Breaking Through is that point at which the Spark develops. This is a dangerous time for one of the Gifted, when their existence is known but they may not yet have built up the power or ability to defend themselves.'' That implies that Sparks that DON'T start fighting for power, unless perhaps they manage to attach themselves to a patron who does have power, are liable to get gobbled up. Is being an amoral, power-crazed loony really meant to be a biological part of what makes a spark a spark, or might they not be (as much) like that in a culture that doesn't already EXPECT them to be power-crazed loonies? It intrigues me from that point of view that as you said, most of Klaus's little pets, sparky and non-sparky alike, come across as what can only be described as pretty nice kids. Gil himself is the clearest example. Although he does a good job of all this nonsense, it's only too clear that he'd rather stay home and play with his aeroplane. (Which, of course, runs in the family.) Is this what you get with a bunch of sparks brought up in a controlled, politics-free environment, happily getting drunk? Mind you, we haven't actually seen any other sparks their age for comparison, that I can think of, except for Tarvek (and I agree with you on Tarvek). It's also always possible that there are always sparks who like a quiet life but we don't know about them because they wisely decide to shut up about it. Random theory: I blame Castle Heterodyne for everything. If the most inspired, irascible, inbred and frankly insane family of sparks in mediaeval Europa build an AI whose only orders are to keep them alive and keep them in power, whatever it takes, and that AI lives on century after century whispering (or, mostly, cackling) in their descendants' ears, what will that AI - Well. We all KNOW what Castle Heterodyne grew up like. I don't think it would have been a very good influence on European diplomacy... Wizardblizzard1 (talk) 01:59, December 2, 2017 (UTC)